Haussmann's Paris Case Study: Boulevards, Building Rules and Sewers

Haussmann's Paris is the city rebuilt between 1853 and 1870, when Emperor Napoléon III and his prefect of the Seine, Georges-Eugène Haussmann, cut wide boulevards through the old centre, wrote height rules that produced the uniform stone street front, nearly doubled the city's area, laid out parks and rebuilt the water supply and sewers. For a student it shows how a street network and a building rule work as one system, how services can be built into the street, and what such a project costs in money and in people moved.

Haussmann's Paris at a glance

Who: Napoléon III (emperor from 1852) and Georges-Eugène Haussmann, prefect of the Seine from 22 June 1853 to January 1870, with engineers Eugène Belgrand (water, sewers) and Jean-Charles Adolphe Alphand (parks).
Where: Paris, France. From 1 January 1860 the city ran out to the Thiers fortifications and was divided into 20 arrondissements.
Scale: the City of Paris gives 64 km of streets cut through, 25,000 houses demolished in ten years and about 80,000 workers. Halliday (2019) gives 418 km of new streets.
Cost: about two billion gold francs over more than twenty years by the City's figure; Jules Ferry put the total charge at two and a half billion francs in 1868.
Status: in daily use; several projects were finished after 1870.

Figures are from the City of Paris and the other sources listed at the end; where they disagree, both are given. Diagrams are MOA's own schematics, not copies of historic plans.

The brief: who planned it and why

The project began before Haussmann. The City of Paris notes that Louis-Napoléon, elected president in 1848, said in 1850 that Paris should be made more beautiful, with new streets and sunlight everywhere. An 1848 order had already fixed facade heights by street width, and an 1852 decree let the city expropriate buildings in the path of new streets, according to the chronology in the City's safeguarding plan for the Marais (PSMV, report part 1B).

Haussmann, until then prefect of the Gironde, was appointed prefect of the Seine on 22 June 1853 with a first mission to "embellir Paris" (City of Paris). The brief mixed traffic, health and image: the city had passed one million people, cholera had struck in 1832 and 1849 (the Paris sewers museum), and the centre was a tangle of narrow lanes. Historian Juliette Glikman, writing for the Fondation Napoléon in 2019, describes three successive street networks meant to make the city easier to cross.

The site: Paris before 1853

Stephen Halliday, in his 2019 history of sewers, contrasts the new boulevards, 20 to 40 m wide, with the alleys of 1 to 2 m they replaced. Even rue Rambuteau, opened under the July Monarchy, was 13 m wide, notes architectural historian Pierre Pinon in Encyclopaedia Universalis.

Below ground, the sewers museum says Paris had 16 km of sewers for 550,000 people in 1800, and the network begun in 1833 mainly collected rainwater and street-washing water. The City of Paris gives about 100 km of sewers in 1850; Halliday gives 142 km before Belgrand's work, much of it draining into the Seine.

Haussmann Paris city plan: a cross, a loop and a bigger city

The plan grew in campaigns rather than being drawn once. Read from the dates, it has four parts.

A cross through the centre. The rue de Rivoli was extended east to the rue Saint-Antoine, completing the right bank's east-west crossing in 1855 (Marais chronology). The north-south arm runs from the boulevard de Strasbourg (begun before Haussmann, Pinon notes) through the boulevard de Sébastopol, opened in 1858, and across the Seine to the boulevard Saint-Michel, decreed in 1855.
A loop of boulevards. The older boulevards of the right bank were matched on the left bank by the boulevard Saint-Germain, whose eastern part was finished in the early 1860s. The boulevard Henri IV, 30 m wide and declared a public work on 28 July 1866, was designed to close the loop. Its line frames the July Column at one end and the Panthéon dome at the other (Marais PSMV, urban ensembles).
A bigger city. The annexation law was passed on 26 May 1859 and took effect on 1 January 1860; Paris got 20 arrondissements, each with a town hall (Pinon), nearly doubled in area (City of Paris) and grew from 1,174,346 inhabitants in 1856 to 1,686,141 in 1861 (Marais chronology).
Public buildings at the nodes. Baltard's iron halls at Les Halles (first pavilions 1857), Garnier's Opéra (1862 to 1875, City of Paris), new town halls, and a square planned in each of the 80 administrative quarters.

Schematic plan of Haussmann's Paris, not a map: an outer oval marks the city limit from 1860 out to the Thiers fortifications and a dashed inner oval marks Paris before 1860. The Seine runs east to west with the Île de la Cité. A red cross through the centre shows the east-west rue de Rivoli and rue Saint-Antoine and the north-south boulevards de Strasbourg, de Sébastopol and Saint-Michel. A black loop shows the older right-bank boulevards, boulevard Saint-Germain on the left bank and boulevard Henri IV closing the loop. Numbered markers show the Opéra, Les Halles, Parc Monceau, the Buttes-Chaumont and Parc Montsouris, blue arrows bring Dhuis and Vanne spring water in, and a brown dashed line takes the main sewer out to the Seine at Asnières; a numbered key gives dates for each — The plan idea in one sheet: a cross through the old centre, a loop of boulevards, a city doubled in area in 1860, parks, spring water in and sewage out. Diagram: MOA

The diagram is not a copy of any historic plan. The City's Marais safeguarding report, linked above, reproduces period plans and views beside its chronology.

Urban structure: boulevards, blocks and the Haussmann building

Street widths

Pinon gives the new streets as 20 or even 30 m wide, with the avenue now called Foch at over 100 m. A boulevard was cut through existing blocks, not widened from an old street. On boulevard Henri IV the City's Marais study counts ten blocks formed by the cut, three of them new, and the old houses lost on its line.

The building rules that made the Haussmann facade

The Haussmann street comes from a rule. The 1848 order, following rules of 1783 and 1784, set facade heights by street width: 11.70 m on streets under 7.80 m wide, 14.62 m on streets from 7.80 to 9.75 m, and 17.55 m on anything wider. Roofs had to stay inside a 45° line from the cornice and below a horizontal line 4.87 m above it, with a quarter circle allowed instead of the 45° line on quays, boulevards, squares and streets of at least 15 m (Marais PSMV chronology).

The decree of 1859 kept this and added a category for boulevards 20 m wide or more, where the cornice could rise to 20 m, provided the building held no more than five full floors, a mezzanine (entresol) counting as one. The roof rule was largely kept, but the roof's height was now limited by half the depth of the building. On boulevard Henri IV, the City's study describes the result: cut-stone buildings of a ground floor, five full floors and one or two roof levels, with continuous balconies on the 2nd and 5th floors running at the same height from one building to the next.

The City of Paris gives the uses: shops and the concierge on the ground floor, the "bourgeois" 2nd floor with high ceilings and balconies, a full-length balcony on the 5th, and domestic staff in the roof. That page says height by street width dates from the end of the Ancien Régime; the Marais study credits 1859 with the 20 m category. Read together, the principle was old and the boulevard category new.

Schematic section across a Haussmann boulevard: two stone apartment buildings face each other across a street marked 20 m wide or more. Each has a ground floor with shops and the concierge, five floors above with continuous balconies on the 2nd and 5th floors, and a slate roof storey for domestic staff inside a dashed 45 degree line from the cornice. A red dimension marks the cornice at up to 20 m under the 1859 decree, with a dotted line showing the 1848 limit of 17.55 m. Under the street an egg-shaped sewer about 2.3 m high and 1.3 m wide carries water pipes. A table compares the 1848 heights by street width, the 1859 rule, and India's Model Building Bye-Laws 2016 rule of 1.5 times the road width plus front open space — The street and the building as one rule: the cornice could rise to 20 m only where the street was 20 m wide or more, with the pipes laid in a gallery under the road. Diagram: MOA

Boulevard Haussmann in the 8th arrondissement of Paris on a sunny day, seen down the middle of a wide, nearly empty carriageway: cream stone apartment buildings of matching height line both sides, with iron balconies, slate mansard roofs and shops at street level, and rows of plane trees along the pavements — Boulevard Haussmann today: stone fronts of similar height, balconies lining up from one building to the next and trees along a wide carriageway, the street type the 1859 rules shaped. Photo: Polymagou, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Parks and squares

The engineer Alphand built the Parc Monceau and the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont. The Buttes-Chaumont, about 25 ha, was made on a former gypsum quarry in about three years and opened on 1 April 1867 for the Universal Exhibition (City of Paris). The City also lists the Parc Montsouris among the parks of the period.

Haussmann Paris sewers and water: the city under the street

Haussmann appointed the engineer Eugène Belgrand to run the city's water service in 1854 (City of Paris, sewers museum page), and created a combined sewers and water service in 1855 (Halliday).

Two waters. From 1865 spring water was piped in for drinking, with non-drinking water for parks and streets (sewers museum); Halliday says Seine water was kept for street cleaning. Water from the Vanne, brought over more than 150 km by aqueduct, reached the Montsouris reservoir, built from 1869 to 1874 and still holding over 200,000 m³ of drinking water.
Sewers big enough to walk in. Street sewers were egg-shaped, about 2.3 m high and 1.3 m wide, so a worker could stand and clear them. Eleven main collectors totalled 64.3 km, and the main outfall to the Seine at Asnières, completed in 1859 by Halliday's account, is over 5 km long, 4.3 m high and 5.5 m wide.
Pipes inside the galleries. Pipes for drinking and non-drinking water, and pneumatic mail tubes, have run through the galleries (sewers museum), so one tunnel serves several networks.

Length figures differ by source and date: nearly 600 km in 1878 (City of Paris), more than 500 km by 1870 (Glikman), almost 800 km after Belgrand quadrupled the network (Halliday). The system had limits. It carried wastewater to the Seine downstream; solid waste was accepted only when the network was completed in 1894, and sewage irrigated farmland from 1868, peaking in 1909 (sewers museum).

How it was built, paid for and governed

The works employed about 80,000 workers. The City of Paris says about two billion gold francs were spent over more than twenty years, roughly the annual budget of France, financed by loans whose interest Parisian taxpayers paid until 1914.

Glikman's commentary on Jules Ferry's pamphlet explains the mechanics. Revenue from the octroi, the city's toll on goods, tripled but did not cover the charge, and from 1858 the hoped-for gains from reselling land evaporated. The Crédit foncier lent to the city, and Haussmann used a complex system of "bons de délégation" that turned the companies building the streets into hidden lenders.

The street total is disputed: 64 km cut through Paris (City of Paris) against 418 km of new broad streets (Halliday). Neither says how it counted, so treat both as headline figures.

Who paid the social cost: demolition and displacement

The City of Paris says 25,000 houses were destroyed in ten years, and that the poorest Parisians, workers in particular, were sent out to the faubourgs, the outer districts. Glikman writes that workers were pushed east, north and into the new arrondissements, which lacked services, and that about a quarter of Parisians changed neighbourhood. The City also records that Haussmann was accused of breaking up centres of protest, and says it became harder for the working class to organise an insurrection. None of the sources opened gives a count of people displaced, so this post gives none.

What changed after 1870

Haussmann was dismissed in January 1870, the year the empire fell; Pinon dates it to 6 January and cites financial abuses and political opposition. Others finished the plan. Boulevard Henri IV's first stretch took about ten years, likely delayed by the 1870 war; the Pont de Sully opened in 1876 and one side of the southern stretch waited until the 1910s (Marais PSMV). The Montsouris reservoir, delayed by the war and the Commune, was finished in 1874, the Opéra in 1875. New rules followed on projections in 1882 and height in 1884.

Reception and criticism

The sharpest attack at the time was financial. Jules Ferry's articles, gathered in 1868 as "Les Comptes fantastiques d'Haussmann" (Glikman; the City of Paris gives 1867), questioned the borrowing and the city's accounts. Glikman also quotes the politician Jules Simon writing in 1882 that Haussmann's work was "at least as fantastic" as his accounts. The City of Paris today presents the parks, boulevards and sewers as a legacy it still uses, and marked 170 years of the works with exhibitions in 2023.

What designers in India can take from it

These are our reading, not lessons the sources draw.

Write the street and the building as one rule. Paris let the cornice reach 20 m on a 20 m street, about one to one, with the roof inside a 45° line. India's Model Building Bye-Laws 2016 (clause 4.29.2) also link height to the road: up to 1.5 times the width of the road plus the front open spaces. Paris added a fixed cornice on the street edge, which is what makes a continuous street front. A city that wants a market street with a steady edge has to write that edge into the rule, not leave it to setbacks and FAR.
Lay the services when the road is built. Belgrand put water pipes inside walkable sewer galleries under the new streets. A new or widened road is the cheapest moment to lay drains, water, power and data where they can be reached without digging it up again.
Count the people a plan moves and house them near work. Paris's plan sent workers to outer districts without services. A road-widening or redevelopment scheme should count the households affected and plan where they go before demolition.
Plan the money and the institution for longer than one officer's term. Paris paid interest until 1914, and the works and the 1855 water and sewer service outlived Haussmann. A master plan needs a lasting body and a financing plan, not only a drawing.

To document a city area for a studio or thesis, see our field checklist for architecture case studies and our B.Arch thesis topics by typology. For a planned layout in India, read our Asian Games Village case study; for another layer of Paris, our Louvre Pyramid case study.

Visiting: seeing Haussmann's Paris

The boulevards: walk the boulevard de Sébastopol, the boulevard Saint-Germain or the northern stretch of boulevard Henri IV (nos. 25 bis to 43 bis), a homogeneous run of late Haussmann buildings (Marais PSMV).
The sewers: the Musée des égouts de Paris, on the esplanade Habib Bourguiba by the Pont de l'Alma, reopened in 2021; the City lists it as open Tuesday to Sunday, 10:00 to 17:00. Check before you go.
The parks: Buttes-Chaumont, Monceau and Montsouris.
The archive: the Musée Carnavalet, 23 rue Madame de Sévigné, the history museum of Paris, bought by the City in 1866 at Haussmann's request (Marais PSMV); its site says the permanent collections are free.

FAQ

What did Haussmann do to Paris?

As prefect of the Seine from 1853 to 1870, he directed new streets and boulevards cut through the old centre, building height rules tied to street width, new parks and squares, a new spring-water supply and a sewer network, with engineers such as Belgrand and Alphand. The City of Paris gives 64 km of streets cut and 25,000 houses demolished in ten years.

When was Haussmann's renovation of Paris?

Mainly from Haussmann's appointment on 22 June 1853 to his dismissal in January 1870. Some works came before (the 1848 height order, the rue de Rivoli extension) and several were finished after, including the Opéra (1875) and parts of boulevard Henri IV (into the 1910s).

What is the Haussmann style of building?

A cut-stone apartment building on the street line, with shops on the ground floor, five full floors with continuous balconies on the 2nd and 5th floors, and a roof storey inside a 45° line from the cornice. The 1859 decree allowed a 20 m cornice on streets 20 m wide or more.

Was Haussmann an architect?

No. He was a civil servant, the prefect of the Seine. The buildings were designed by many architects working to the city's rules, and the engineering was led by Eugène Belgrand (water and sewers) and Jean-Charles Adolphe Alphand (parks).

How much did Haussmann's Paris cost?

The City of Paris says about two billion gold francs over more than twenty years, roughly France's annual budget, paid for with loans whose interest ran until 1914. Jules Ferry put the total charge at two and a half billion francs in 1868.

Planning a building that has to work with its street? Find an architect on MOA.

Sources

Ville de Paris: Haussmann, l'homme qui a transformé Paris, updated 4 Dec 2023: appointment date, 80,000 workers, 64 km, 25,000 houses, sewers 1850 and 1878, cost, floors, displacement (accessed 11 Nov 2026)
Ville de Paris: Plan de sauvegarde et de mise en valeur du Marais, rapport de présentation, partie 1B (PDF): 1848 order, 1852 decree, 1859 decree, 1855 and 1858 openings, 1860 population, 1882 and 1884 rules (accessed 11 Nov 2026)
Ville de Paris: Plan de sauvegarde et de mise en valeur du Marais, rapport de présentation, ensembles urbains (PDF): boulevard Henri IV, 1859 gabarit, Saint-Germain (accessed 11 Nov 2026)
Pierre Pinon, Encyclopaedia Universalis: Haussmann, l'œuvre accomplie and le mythe Haussmann: street widths, annexation law, dismissal date (accessed 11 Nov 2026)
Juliette Glikman, Fondation Napoléon: Le Paris d'Haussmann : la transformation d'une ville (2019): three networks, displacement, sewers by 1870 (accessed 11 Nov 2026)
Juliette Glikman, Fondation Napoléon: Les Comptes fantastiques d'Haussmann, de Jules Ferry : commentaire et extraits (2019): financing, Ferry's estimate, quarter of Parisians moved (accessed 11 Nov 2026)
Stephen Halliday, Lit Hub: On (and In) the Sewers That Transformed Paris, excerpt from An Underground Guide to Sewers (MIT Press, 2019): street widths, sewer sizes, collectors, Asnières (accessed 11 Nov 2026)
Musée des égouts de Paris: A History of the Sewers: 1800 network, Belgrand, 1865 water, 1894, irrigation (accessed 11 Nov 2026)
Ville de Paris: Le musée des égouts: visiting, 1854 and 1867 dates (accessed 11 Nov 2026)
Ville de Paris: Le réservoir Montsouris: dates, capacity, Vanne aqueduct (accessed 11 Nov 2026)
Ville de Paris: Le parc des Buttes-Chaumont: area, quarry, opening (accessed 11 Nov 2026)
Musée Carnavalet: official site: address, free collections (accessed 11 Nov 2026)
Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, TCPO: Model Building Bye-Laws 2016 (PDF), clause 4.29.2 (accessed 11 Nov 2026)